1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to displaying information in windows, and more particularly, to dynamically materializing disappearing entities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Large files in combination with a limited amount of display area on display devices continue to present problems for a user of applications and tools encompassing those files. Although many enhancements have been made over the years, significant problems still remain.
One conventional method used to display the information in a large file is to present the file in a scrollable area on the display, with various user controls, such as a scroll bar or search dialog box, and display a portion of the file containing the information or data (text and/or graphic) of interest. When the user scrolls the file, the previously displayed information may be entirely scrolled off the display screen. For example, a user may be scrolling or searching through a large file containing a historical document. The user is searching for particular passages to illustrate a particular point. The document is so large that two passages-of-interest cannot be displayed simultaneously in the scrollable area. However, the user would like to see the passages-of-interest simultaneously on the display, and not have them scrolled out of view with each successive search or scroll operation.
The user could open a second application and copy and paste the desired information on the window of the second application. However, manually opening another application and performing the copy and paste is cumbersome and inconvenient.
One word processing application, Microsoft® (Registered Trademark of Microsoft Corporation) Word, displays a clipboard with copied text alongside a file in a scrollable area. However, text is not automatically placed on the clipboard as it scrolls out of view.
Therefore there is a need for a technique that allows a user to automatically view information that has scrolled out of view.